When you can watch it over and over and still enjoy it as if you were a kid again. Hell even The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown qualifies.

I've seen some really good movies over the last decade...but very few I would want to watch again. Once is good enough for me. Vicky Christina Barcelona? Yeah, good shiate...Woody Allen's a genius blah blah blah...but Christ I definitely won't be asking to see a copy of it on my deathbed. That's for Raiders of the Lost Ark or something.

Movies today have no heart. They're just a bunch of contrived messes with good-looking people more interested in being stars than being actors. Add to that unnatural CGI designed more to showoff the power of your renderfarm...and you've got a recipe for never ending hokeyness.

The Enterprise escaping spacedock in Star Trek III looks 10 times more realistic than any sweeping unrealistic camera shot of a million-man orc army.

I'm not the biggest Spielberg fan, mostly because I like darker and more adult-themed films than what he has historically created. But to say that he is not one of the greatest and most innovative directors and producers in the history of film (be it top 5, 15 or 25) is a huge disservice. The number of iconic moments film under his watch is practically countless.

I wouldn't go that far.I think it's more a case of movie-makers not knowing what to do with the unlimited power of CGI. Back in ST3, you had models and sets with certain costs, and you knew what you could get away with as far as money was concerned. That left the rest of the focus to making the most of what you had. When what you have is limitless, or at least, conceivably limitless, you spend more time making the content than what you do with that content. Pretty much the death knell of the Star Wars prequels.If ST3 were made today, JJ Abrams would probably have half of the Federation in a wild chase of the Enterprise out of the solar system, with lots of ships, explosions, and CGI budget. It would have looked amazing. But at the same time, wouldn't have shown off the finesse of Kirk and crew working with just their wits.

DamnYankees:mitchcumstein1: DamnYankees: mitchcumstein1: Hook, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Minority Report and Munich have all been made within the last couple decades. Catch Me If You Can was fun if not great.

One of these things is not like the other...

I was 12 when that movie came out, it was made to appeal to me. I saw it with my grandfather, he died shortly thereafter, it will always have a soft spot in my heart.

That's cool - I liked that movie a lot when I was a kid also. But its objectively not a very good movie.

Good music, though.

My opinion of Hook has actually gotten better over the years. It was gaudy and over produced, but watching it through the prism of today's movies, it's somewhat quaint and old school. No overload on CGI. The sets are real sets. Every single background character is an extra, not CGI. No Michael Bay-style rapid editing, you can follow the action. It's perhaps the last time we got to see a spectacle of that magnitude that isn't 90% digitized. I wonder if that's why Spielberg gave Michael Bay all that movey to make the Transformers movies. To make Hook (and 1941) look good by comparison.

Lando Lincoln:DamnYankees: I don;t know what to say. The movie itself is not amazing, but the craftsmanship really is. Spielberg knows how to tell stories.

Yeah, "craftsmanship." As in, "Hey, wouldn't it be AWESOME if we had a scene where the aliens attacked a ferry boat full of cars and people and the boat started tipping over and the cars were all rolling around and smashing up people and stuff? And people DROWNING in the cars! Yeah, I know it doesn't make a goddamn bit of sense to have a ferry boat full of cars that don't work. I mean, why wouldn't all the people just push the dead cars off of the ferry boat and then an extra thousand people would be able to be loaded onto the ferry boat every trip? If we were to write this sensibly, then we wouldn't have that AWESOME SCENE where the cars go flying into the water and shiat!"

"Craftsmanship." Otherwise known as "eye candy."

Or as in, "hey, wouldn't it be AWESOME if when the mothership finally appears in CE3K, instead of descending from space, it rises from behind Devil's Tower. Yeah, I know it doesn't make a goddamn bit of sense to have the mothership rising from behind the mountain. I mean, it's not like there is a mothership-sized hole where it could conceal itself away from the US government which had station itself there for several days beforehand, so that it can make it's presence know when the time was right. If we were to write this sensibly, then we wouldn't have that AWESOME SCENE where the mothership rises from behind Devil's Tower and shiat!"

/Spielberg readily admitted in the behind-the-scenes feature that made no sense but looked cool

I enjoy quite a few of Spielberg's films but find myself less impressed by his work in the past decade or so. Great director whose talents seem to be shifting more toward that of producer (of which he does a very good job as well).

All that said, I don't think he could even crack the top 10* list of directors of all time, despite all the love he got in the media during the 90s.

* 'Course, lists like these are highly subjective to begin with, but still...

Doing well like a blockbuster? No. But the entire genre of American Pie, Can't Hardly Wait, Sixteen Candles, Superbad, etc etc etc (and Project X next spring) are inexpensive to produce and pull in the high school and just-graduated-high-school crowds. Like I said, it's cynical, but it works. Studios wouldn't crank them out over and over and over if they didn't fit a profitable niche.

That would be a hit. Cassandra' Dream, for example would be a miss. Scoop would be an abortion.

You shan't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Not saying you should, but to saying that Speilberg should go to Woody Allen to better know how to make an entertaining film is crazy talk.

I think Jurassic Park has aged fantastically. The CGI still looks plausible today almost 20 years on. Hell, it looks more realistic than half the shiat in the Star Wars prequels.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on Saving Private Ryan.

You're going on about the CGI when I'm talking about the story. The story hasn't aged well and is, at best, just a popcorn flick.

Well, since the stars of the movie really are the dinosaurs I would say that CGI was fairly important. When you say it ages badly that's what I think you mean, that story is kind of timeless. Two little kids get to hang out with dinosaurs and get rescued by Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum when things go badly? How the fark doesn't age well? It was always a popcorn flick, what deeper meaning where you looking for in a movie about bringing dinosaurs back to life?

Timeless? Come on. It's a trite story wrapped within "OH WOW, DINOSAURS!" If that still gets you off then have at it, but it's pretty hollow for me.

Toshiro Mifune's Letter Opener:gunga galunga: I'll take Hook and 1941 over Lost World, Crystal Skull or Last Crusade any day of the week. Temple of Doom edges them out because of the Club Obi Wan scene and the mine car scene.

/haven't seen Always since it came out but can picture that not holding up at all//thought it was okay when I saw it but paled compared to Field of Dreams which came out the same year

I saw you mention Crystal Skull and Last Crusade, so I naturally thought, "PLEASE don't tell me he's going there with Temple."

You didn't. That's good on ya. I love me some Temple..

The two aforementioned scenes are perhaps my favorite two scenes from the entire series. The movie is, as a whole, certainly not the masterpiece that Raiders was but those sequences (the mine car race was supposed to have been in Raiders) were truly inspired.

gunga galunga:The two aforementioned scenes are perhaps my favorite two scenes from the entire series. The movie is, as a whole, certainly not the masterpiece that Raiders was but those sequences (the mine car race was supposed to have been in Raiders) were truly inspired.

Temple is ruined from the start because the burning urge to reach into the screen and strangle Kate Capshaw is just too overpoweringly distracting.

Also, Short Round's squeaky screechy voice is also heinous counterpoint to any of the rubbish Capshaw was spewing/screaming.

dopeydwarf:DamnYankees: dopeydwarf: There have been great movies made over the past couple decades, it's just that Spielberg hasn't made one in a while so he thinks they don't exist. Stevey, watch a good Woody Allen movie and see how it's done. I really love Match Point. Midnight in Paris was pretty damn good too and both were made within the last decade.

Depending how broadly we are defining "great", I think Munich would count as a great movie. It's not an all timer, but if by "great" we mean something like 25 or 50 best of a decade, then Munich would count to me.

Oh yeah, Munich was definitely great. It's a grim one which is why I think a lot of people wouldn't do repeat viewings, but I was on the edge of my seat throughout it.

Bored shiatless. Munich was a woeful piece of garbage. Overly long, terribly paced. there were 11 people to kill and 90 minutes in 3 were dead. I didn't care about their accented ramblings, nor did i find any of it believeable, but most of all I thought if it keeps up like this I'm going to be here for 5 more hours.

nigeman:dopeydwarf: DamnYankees: dopeydwarf: There have been great movies made over the past couple decades, it's just that Spielberg hasn't made one in a while so he thinks they don't exist. Stevey, watch a good Woody Allen movie and see how it's done. I really love Match Point. Midnight in Paris was pretty damn good too and both were made within the last decade.

Depending how broadly we are defining "great", I think Munich would count as a great movie. It's not an all timer, but if by "great" we mean something like 25 or 50 best of a decade, then Munich would count to me.

Oh yeah, Munich was definitely great. It's a grim one which is why I think a lot of people wouldn't do repeat viewings, but I was on the edge of my seat throughout it.

Bored shiatless. Munich was a woeful piece of garbage. Overly long, terribly paced. there were 11 people to kill and 90 minutes in 3 were dead. I didn't care about their accented ramblings, nor did i find any of it believeable, but most of all I thought if it keeps up like this I'm going to be here for 5 more hours.

Plus the real-life story of how the assassinations panned out is a lot more interesting, and they didn't use it.

DamnYankees:Dude, you need to see more movies. Just in the past few years, There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men are all time classics.

Also, this. Superb movies, those.

gunga galunga:The two aforementioned scenes are perhaps my favorite two scenes from the entire series. The movie is, as a whole, certainly not the masterpiece that Raiders was but those sequences (the mine car race was supposed to have been in Raiders) were truly inspired.

The opening to Temple was flat-out awesome. And while the movie as a whole can't compare to Raiders, it's still a hell of a ride.

I could've done without the blood drinking stuff, but I don't have a lot of complaints about that movie.

Toshiro Mifune's Letter Opener:DamnYankees: Dude, you need to see more movies. Just in the past few years, There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men are all time classics.

Also, this. Superb movies, those.

gunga galunga: The two aforementioned scenes are perhaps my favorite two scenes from the entire series. The movie is, as a whole, certainly not the masterpiece that Raiders was but those sequences (the mine car race was supposed to have been in Raiders) were truly inspired.

The opening to Temple was flat-out awesome. And while the movie as a whole can't compare to Raiders, it's still a hell of a ride.

I could've done without the blood drinking stuff, but I don't have a lot of complaints about that movie.

Yeah, yeah, I know, Kate Capshaw.Jonathan Ke Quan

seriously? People bagging on Temple? The opening bar scene, the "nice try, Lao Che", the plane ride, the castle, the fist-fights, the tunnels, the bridge, THE FREAkING BRIDGE SCENE!!!... It wasnt movie perfection like Raiders, but damn, it was close

crashdavis18:Raiders of the Lost Ark is below Catch Me if You Can? There is indeed no accounting for taste.

I didn't even notice.

Yeah, that ain't right.

Hell NO, that ain't right.

HappyHarryHardOn:seriously? People bagging on Temple? The opening bar scene, the "nice try, Lao Che", the plane ride, the castle, the fist-fights, the tunnels, the bridge, THE FREAkING BRIDGE SCENE!!!... It wasnt movie perfection like Raiders, but damn, it was close

I don't understand why Temple gets bagged on as much as it does (okay, there's Kate Capshaw), but it's still a damn good time.

yeh, lumet fails, but that's largely because he kept working long after he apparently should have, or else he was hard up for cash to make some of those clunkers....

Where the love for Billy Wilder?

1960 The Apartment1959 Some Like It Hot1957 Witness for the Prosecution1957 Love in the Afternoon1955 The Seven Year Itch1954 Sabrina1953 Stalag 171951 Ace in the Hole1950 Sunset Blvd.1945 The Lost Weekend1944 Double Indemnity

I'm the biggest Kubrick honk there is, but Wilder has a seriously overlookedbody of work. These works have a soul, and they stay with you.

Also go watch Kieslowski's Color Trilogy, you'll learn a thing or two about cinema.

Kieslowski's 'Red' is a superb film. Highly recommended.

the whole trilogy is astounding, I still find myself watching Double Life of Veronique more often though even though techinically it may be a lesser film(s). Something about the Bergman-esqueism of focusing so much on Jacob's face. or...maybe its because I'm waiting on Criterion to replace my 'White' Disc for its audio problems.

velvet_fog:"Where are the great movies?" asks the director of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, 1941, Always, Temple of Doom, Hook, The Lost World, Munich, War of the Worlds, The Terminal.

He's made great movies, but he's been responsible for his fair share of schlock. Like almost every director (even many great ones).

If anything, he can be partially blamed for Hollywood's reliance on the summer blockbuster, after the success of Jaws and Raiders.